Care, community, and learning together

Dedicated to Aurora’s Wellness and Needs (DAWN) partners with our community to ensure equitable health access and educate future healthcare providers.

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Rooted in Aurora

DAWN is a nonprofit organization that brings patient-centered care, community partnership, and health-professions education together. Our work is shaped by the people and organizations who know Aurora and its communities.

Care and education are connected at DAWN. Students learn with, from, and about one another while working alongside clinicians, faculty mentors, community partners, and organizational leaders. Patient needs, safety, and dignity come first.

Mission, vision, and values

Vision

Partner with our community to ensure equitable health access and educate future healthcare providers.

One mission, four connected commitments

DAWN’s mission is expressed through four pillars. Together, they describe how DAWN approaches care, partnership, education, and equity.

Providing Patient-Centered Care

Patients’ needs, goals, safety, and dignity guide care and communication.

Collaborating with Our Community

DAWN works through relationships with community members and partner organizations.

Educating Future Healthcare Providers

Learners develop through interprofessional education grounded in respectful, patient-centered care.

Advancing Health Equity

DAWN works to address barriers to healthcare access while treating every person with respect.

Our values

Community

Equity and Justice

Safety

Patient-Centered Care

Humble Learning

Our story

DAWN is the product of community partnership and primary care advocacy.

In fall 2013, Aurora community leaders, interprofessional learners, and faculty from the Anschutz Medical Campus gathered to launch a local chapter of Primary Care Progress, now Intend Health Strategies. They discussed how to support primary care on the Anschutz Medical Campus and in the Aurora community.

The meeting led to two conclusions:

There was a large unmet need for primary care in the Aurora community, particularly for uninsured people. Recent community needs assessments and community health leaders made that need clear.
Interprofessional faculty and students, many of whom had not met before that day, were inspired to work together so the academic community could be part of the solution.

The idea of an interprofessional clinic model was born. Health-professions students, resident physicians, and faculty invited others into the work through classrooms, campus meetings, and informal gatherings. Nearly every health profession at the Anschutz Medical Campus joined, along with psychology learners and faculty from the University of Denver.

Community partners made the work possible. The Fields Foundation, a local 501(c)(3) organization that had sought to provide healthcare services for years, sponsored the effort. With its support and that of other valued community organizations, Dedicated to Aurora’s Wellness and Needs (DAWN) opened in March 2015.

Since 2015, DAWN has grown and expanded specialty care services, social-services navigation, and educational initiatives while adapting to community input. DAWN incorporated as an independent 501(c)(3) nonprofit in late 2018.